54 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



asked him how he steered, now that we had lost the North 

 Star. ' Is there any other North Star than this by which 

 we steer? " In answer the captain "showed us four or five 

 stars, among which was one which he said was opposite to 

 our North Star. He also told us that, on the other side of 

 the said island towards the South, there are some other 

 races who navigate by the said four or five stars opposite 

 to ours ; and moreover he gave us to understand that, 

 beyond the said island (Java), the day does not last more 

 than four hours, and that it was colder than in any other 

 part of the world." 



Now it has been pointed out that a day of four hours 

 means a latitude fifteen degrees further South than Tas- 

 mania ! And it seems incredible that the Javanese, and 

 "other races" known to the Javanese, should have sailed 

 so far South as this, at least in the longitude of Java. 

 Was the captain thinking of Malay voyages to the North 

 coast of Australia, and immensely exaggerating the dis- 

 tance ? Or was he thinking of Malay or Arab voyages to 

 far-away Madagascar and Zanzibar ? Or was he simply 

 spinning a yarn for the amusement of his inquisitive 

 passengers ? Anyway Varthema took his statement hi 

 great seriousness, and Varthema in his turn was taken in 

 great seriousness by the geographers. His story seemed to 

 confirm what had been previously gathered from Marco 

 Polo about the existence of a great continent in the far 

 South. When the sixteenth-century map-maker drew in 

 bold hard outline the coast of this great Southern Continent, 

 he wrote across it the words " that immense lands exist 

 here is consistent with what is said by Paulus Venetus and 

 Ludovicus Varthema." 



The night- We are now a little able to understand the tangled 

 geographers geographical nightmare of the maps of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. Pity the unhappy map-maker of 

 these centuries ! Firstly, he had to put into some sort of 

 geographic order the scraps of information imbedded in 

 the romantic narratives which the travellers had dictated 

 to friends far more interested in marvels than in science. 

 Thus Fra Mauro, who made the first famous map of the 



